'The cold hard facts' immunisation and vaccine preventable diseases in Australia's newsprint media 1993-1998

The news media have the potential to influence public perceptions about childhood vaccination. Research has quantified the extent of positive news reportage on immunisation but no studies have explored the rhetorical nature and the core appeals that characterise positive reportage. To complement our previous research on the rhetorical nature of anti-immunisation reportage, this paper reviews positive coverage of immunisation in over four and a half years of Australian newsprint media. Three core topics dominated the reportage; the problem of vaccine preventable diseases and low immunisation rates, notions of who is responsible and the implied solutions. The threat of vaccine preventable diseases was conveyed using panic language, disease personification, quantification rhetoric, stories of personal tragedies and portentous tales from yesteryear. Attribution for low immunisation rates ranged from blaming parents to blaming lack of government coordination. However, most blame framed individuals as responsible. The most popular spokespersons were representatives of professional medical bodies who tended to be cast as voices of authority, castigating the ignorance and apathy of parents. Urging of compulsory vaccination, pleas for parents to immunise their children and the provision of information about vaccine preventable diseases were the most frequently occurring implied solutions. Immunisation was promoted as a modern medical miracle, health professionals were portrayed as soldiers in the fight against killer diseases and urges to immunise were usually conveyed through the use of stern directives. Understanding how immunisation messages are framed in the media and the core values to which those messages appeal highlights opportunities for media advocates to enhance desired messages and reframe those which are considered antipathetic to the goals of public health advocacy.     

Prioritizing government funding of adolescent vaccinations: recommendations from young people on a citizens’ jury

ObjectiveAdolescents’ views, and preferences are often over-looked when public health policies that affect them are designed and implemented. The purpose of this study was to describe young people's views and preferences for determining government funding priorities for adolescent immunization programs.MethodsIn 2015 we conducted a youth jury in metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia to deliberate on the question “What criteria should we use to decide which vaccines for young people in Australia should receive public funding?” Fifteen youth aged 15–19 years participated in the jury. Jury members were recruited from the general community through a market research company using a stratified sampling technique.ResultsThe jury's key priorities for determining publically funded vaccines were:Disease severity – whether the vaccine preventable disease (VPD) was life threatening and impacted on quality of life.Transmissibility – VPDs with high/fast transmission and high prevalence.Demonstration of cost-effectiveness, taking into account purchase price, program administration, economic and societal gain.The jury's recommendations for vaccine funding policy were strongly underpinned by the belief that it was critical to ensure that funding was targeted to not only population groups who would be medically at risk from vaccine preventable diseases, but also to socially and economically disadvantaged population groups. A novel recommendation proposed by the jury was that there should be a process for establishing criteria to remove vaccines from publically funded programs as a complement to the process for adding new vaccines.ConclusionsYoung people have valuable contributions to make in priority setting for health programs and their views should be incorporated into the framing of health policies that directly affect them.     

The Global Public Health Intelligence Network and early warning outbreak detection: a Canadian contribution to global public health

The recent SARS epidemic has renewed widespread concerns about the global transmission of infectious diseases. In this commentary, we explore novel approaches to global infectious disease surveillance through a focus on an important Canadian contribution to the area--the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN). GPHIN is a cutting-edge initiative that draws on the capacity of the Internet and newly available 24/7 global news coverage of health events to create a unique form of early warning outbreak detection. This commentary outlines the operation and development of GPHIN and compares it to ProMED-mail, another Internet-based approach to global health surveillance. We argue that GPHIN has created an important shift in the relationship of public health and news information. By exiting the pyramid of official reporting, GPHIN has created a new monitoring technique that has disrupted national boundaries of outbreak notification, while creating new possibilities for global outbreak response. By incorporating news within the emerging apparatus of global infectious disease surveillance, GPHIN has effectively responded to the global media's challenge to official country reporting of outbreak and enhanced the effectiveness and credibility of international public health.     

Communicating uncertainty - how Australian television reported H1N1 risk in 2009: a content analysis

Background  

Health officials face particular challenges in communicating with the public about emerging infectious diseases of unknown severity such as the 2009 H1N1(swine 'flu) pandemic (pH1N1). Statements intended to create awareness and convey the seriousness of infectious disease threats can draw accusations of scare-mongering, while officials can be accused of complacency if such statements are not made. In these communication contexts, news journalists, often reliant on official sources to understand issues are pivotal in selecting and emphasising aspects of official discourse deemed sufficiently newsworthy to present to the public. This paper presents a case-study of news communication regarding the emergence of pH1N1.     

基于6种中外生科类期刊对比的新媒体化传播研究

【目的】 分析中外生科类学术期刊新媒体传播现状,总结可供借鉴的学术期刊新媒体传播方式和手段。【方法】 选取6种中外代表性的SCI收录期刊,采用定量与定性研究相结合的方法,对比分析各期刊的微信、微博、Twitter、Facebook等社交平台以及官方网站的运营现状。【结果】 国内外学术期刊在社交媒体平台上形成以期刊官方网站为主,社交媒体平台为辅的运营模式,运营内容主要为文章导读、论坛会议新闻、人事及其他信息集锦3种类型。生科类学术期刊的新媒体推送形式多为导读+原文官方网站链接,推送形式较为单一。【结论】 学术期刊在社交媒体平台的运营中,应该做到多角度差异化定位,积极构建多媒体矩阵;深挖传播内容,创新推送形式;细分用户,提供定制化服务;与受众形成多向互动,积极积累内容资源。     

Development and release of a national immunization app for Canada (ImmunizeCA)

Digital technology has created an opportunity to reenvision the traditional immunization paper record. We describe our experience developing a government endorsed mobile immunization record in Canada. The smartphone app, ImmunizeCA is designed to assist individuals in managing their own health information. It allows individuals to store their and their family's immunization records on their smartphone. The app, which is populated by data provided by the user, contains all 13 provincial and territorial schedules, immunization information and outbreak alerts on vaccine preventable diseases. Our experience suggests mobile apps can serve as a mechanism to empower users, increase participation in the process of immunization, potentially improve immunization rates and address jurisdictional obstacles. Key measures of success will include long term uptake, acceptability as an official record, enabling data flow permitting integration with immunization information systems and the ability to rapidly iterate to address changes to both immunization practice and mobile technology.     

NEGOTIATING NEWS CHILDHOODS

This paper, based on a case study of the production of the BBC children's news programme, Newsround, examines the importance of professionals' views of children's “childhood” within programme production. Approaching media production with this concern brings sharply into view how understandings of the young audience develop within journalists' culture. Further, the case study approach reveals how news practices inscribed with professionals' understandings of children's cognitive abilities, their interests and relationship to the news programme shape the production of the BBC children's programme. The paper concludes, on the basis of this study, that the news agenda conditioned in this process restricts children's access to knowledge, information and debate about important adult affairs.     

'A healthy lifestyle might be the death of you': discourses on diet, cholesterol control and heart disease in the press and among the lay public

In Australia and other western countries, research on the relationship between dietary intake and coronary heart disease has attracted wide news media coverage. One of the most recent issues to receive media attention is the role of cholesterol control in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease. News reports on cholesterol and diet have vacillated confusingly from supporting health promotional orthodoxy in warning individuals to monitor carefully their intake of certain substances such as fats, salt and cholesterol, to questioning the validity of such dietary control. This paper presents the findings of a study investigating media coverage of and the responses of members of the lay public to recent diet and cholesterol control controversies. Analysis found that while the participants commonly articulated concern about their diet, they also expressed a high degree of cynicism both in the news media's coverage and health promotional advice on diet and cholesterol control. Respondents drew upon discourses relating to the pleasurable nature of indulging oneself in eating, but also expressed moralistic discourses concerning the need to ‘work’ at being healthy, thus juggling the dialectic of health as control and health as release. The adage that ‘everything in moderation’ was the way to live one's life, regardless of official advice concerning dietary regulation, was commonly expressed as a strategy of coping with the confusions around diet.     

Envisaging the embryo in stem cell research: rhetorical strategies and media reporting of the ethical debates

Abstract How is the embryo defined, envisaged, imagined? Who speaks on its behalf, and how? Based on a study of UK press and TV news reporting, this paper identifies the rhetorical strategies used to assert competing ethical positions around embryonic stem cell research. We show how both sides in the dispute mobilise metaphors and use personification to recruit support; and how they promote different ideas about the embryo's significance, size, and social embeddedness and present competing narratives about its origins, destiny and ‘death’. The role of visual representation is key here. It does not follow the usual pattern whereby, in the abortion debate, those ‘on the side’ of the fetus display its image while those who are ‘pro‐choice’ shy away from this. In the stem cell debate the pattern is inverted, highlighting the role of technologies of visualisation in defining what counts as human. Our analysis also shows how the media coverage marginalises women's perspectives, disregards more fundamental challenges to science, side‐lines concerns about effectiveness or safety and curtails discussion of broader issues. We reflect on the media processes restricting debate in this way and conclude by identifying opportunities for a more inclusive discussion of science ethics.     

Social situation of development: parents perspectives on infants-toddlers' concept formation in science

The social situation of development (SSD) specific to each age determines regularly the whole picture of the child's life. Therefore, we need to learn about the whole context surrounding children relevant to their development. The focus of the study is to understand parent's views on infant-toddler's science concept formation in the family context. Reviewed literature informs us that infants-toddlers experience small science concepts in everyday life. However, this work does not explain how these experiences contribute to the infants-toddlers' SSD. In this paper, parental interviews (four hours of video-audio data) have been analysed to understand this gap. The findings inform us that possibilities of science concept formation at the infant-toddler age are not any extra effort for parents; rather, the concepts could be developed as part of the SSD in everyday contexts. This research impacts on an under-researched area of infants' and toddlers' science concept formation in the family context.     

Who Is the Biggest Loser? Fat News Coverage Is a Barrier to Healthy Lifestyle Promotion

Through a textual and visual analysis of online news stories and public commentary about fat bodies, this article provides insights into the media's reporting on the “war on obesity.” It identifies the stigmatizing role that the media plays. Specifically, the media draws on five key discourses in constructing fat bodies: pathologized, gazed upon, marginalized, controlled, and gendered. As news media coverage influences how society views health and policy issues, we argue that social marketers need to take an active role in changing the public's antifat attitudes through healthy lifestyle promotion tactics and strategies that reduce weight stigma.     

芦山地震灾区疫苗可预防传染病的初步风险评估

目的评估四川省芦山地震灾区疫苗可预防传染病的发生、传播风险,为灾后预防控制（防控）传染病提供有针对性的建议。方法采集2008—2013年4月20日灾区的传染病报告数据,进行回顾性疫情分析;收集疫苗接种率数据和免疫规划服务体系受损情况,分析地震灾害对灾区疫苗可预防传染病发生、传播可能产生的影响;对甲型肝炎（甲肝）等12种疫苗可预防传染病的发生和传播进行风险评估,并提出防控建议。结果芦山地震灾区2012年国家免疫规划疫苗实际接种率可能被高估。震后免疫规划服务体系遭受严重破坏,对疫苗可预防传染病发生、传播造成影响的因素主要有：安置点卫生条件差、疫源动物和媒介昆虫活动变化、人群流动性加大以及免疫规划服务可及性下降等。综合评估甲肝、流行性腮腺炎（流腮）在灾区传播的风险较高,其次麻疹、风疹和水痘易发生局部爆发疫情。结论震后灾区疫苗可预防传染病的防控,应开展甲肝疫苗和麻疹一流腮-风疹联合疫苗的群体性预防接种,做好水痘和流行性乙型脑炎等疫苗储备,加强疫苗可预防传染病的监测和报告,并尽快恢复常规免疫服务。     

Reported occupational respiratory diseases in Catalonia

Objectives

A voluntary surveillance system was implemented in Catalonia (Spain) to ascertain the feasibility, incidence, and characteristics of occupational respiratory diseases and compare them with those of the compulsory official system.

Methods

In 2002, in collaboration with the Occupational and Thoracic Societies of Catalonia, occupational and chest physicians and other specialists were invited to report, on a bimonthly basis, newly diagnosed cases of occupational respiratory diseases. Information requested on each case included diagnosis, age, sex, place of residence, occupation, suspected agent, and physician''s opinion on the likelihood that the condition was work related. Compulsory official system data derived from statistics on work related diseases for possible disability benefits declared by insurance companies, which are responsible for declaring these diseases to the Autonomous Government of Catalonia.

Results

Of 142 physicians seeing patients with occupational respiratory diseases approached, 102 (74%) participated. Three hundred and fifty nine cases were reported, of which asthma (48.5%), asbestos related diseases (14.5%), and acute inhalations (12.8%) were the most common. Physicians rated 63% of suspected cases as highly likely, 28% as likely, and 8% as low likelihood. The most frequent suspected agents reported for asthma were isocyanates (15.5%), persulphates (12.1%), and cleaning products (8.6%). Mesothelioma (5.9%) was the most frequent diagnosis among asbestos related diseases. The number of acute inhalations reported was high, with metal industries (26%), cleaning services (22%), and chemical industries (13%) being the most frequently involved. The frequency of occupational respiratory diseases recorded by this voluntary surveillance system was four times higher than that reported by the compulsory official system.

Conclusions

The compulsory scheme for reporting occupational lung diseases is seriously underreporting in Catalonia. A surveillance programme based on voluntary reporting by physicians may provide better understanding of the incidence and characteristics of these diseases. Persulphates and cleaning products, besides isocyanates, were the most reported causes of occupational asthma. Metal industries and cleaning services were the occupations most frequently involved in acute inhalations with a remarkably high incidence in our register.     

Outrage Factors in Government Press Releases of Food Risk and Their Influence on News Media Coverage

An appropriate level of risk perception should be a critical issue in modern “risk society.” There have been many studies on the influences on risk perception. This study investigates whether risk communication scholar Dr. Peter Sandman's outrage factors intensify journalistic attention to health risks from food consumption. A content analysis of a health institution's press releases was conducted to examine 15 outrage factors of food risks conveyed in the governmental risk communication. In addition, the news stories covering the food risks informed by the press releases were calculated to evaluate the relation between outrage factors of a risk and the number of news stories covering the risk. Results showed that controllability was the most salient outrage factor, followed by trust, voluntariness, familiarity, and human origin; the greater the outrage score of a risk, the more news stories of the risk. For individual outrage factors, a risk with an implication of catastrophic potential was associated with an increase of news stories. Food providers’ distrustful behaviors also influenced journalistic attention to the food risks. The implication of the findings to health message designers is discussed.     

The Depiction of Illness and Related Matters in Two Top-Ranked Primetime Network Medical Dramas in the United States: A Content Analysis

The effectiveness of entertainment-education is evidenced in previous research; nevertheless, content analytic research on the health content in such programs has been relatively meager in comparison to the large amount of content analyses of health content in news or ads in print media or on television. To address this issue, the current study content analyzed the portrayals of illnesses and related matters in 127 episodes aired from 2000 to 2007 of two top-ranked television medical dramas in the United States (Grey's Anatomy and ER). Results indicated that the two shows portrayed a wide range of illnesses and diseases, with injury, cardiovascular disease, and cancer being the top three most frequently portrayed. Moreover, equal numbers of men and women patient characters were portrayed, Caucasians and African Americans were the top two portrayed races, and the elderly were underrepresented. Last, the shows framed illness and health mainly from a medical perspective in references to the illness's causes, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Science writers' reactions to a medical "breakthrough" story

In numerous incidences, the news coverage of medical research has incited unjustified optimism or fear. The medical literature provides an archive of the scientific community's condemnation of these misleading reports, but little is known about how they are judged by newsmakers. This study explored science writers' reactions to a controversial New York Times story that inflated the hopes of thousands of cancer patients. More than 60 science writers in the US, Canada, and Great Britain participated in a 12-day email discussion triggered by the Times article. We analyzed 255 of these email postings and coded (1) positive and negative critiques of the Times story, (2) references to the article's repercussions including the creation of false hope, (3) attributions of responsibility for the resulting public misunderstanding, and (4) suggestions to improve the public's comprehension of medical research news. The participating science writers generally responded negatively to the controversial article: 83% of the critiques were unfavorable. In addition, the science writers in the sample were cognizant and concerned about the impact of their work on the public, and accepted the largest share of the responsibility for the false hope created by the news coverage of medical research. Finally, the suggestions offered by respondents to improve the public's understanding of medical research news were similar to those proposed by the scientific community. Thus, some commonality exists between how scientists and science writers believe the news coverage of medical research could be improved.     

Breaking Bad News: The Patient's Viewpoint

The objective of this study was to ascertain how patients judge the acceptability of physicians' communication of bad news. Two hundred forty-five adults, who had in the past received bad medical news, indicated the acceptability of physicians' conduct in 48 vignettes of giving bad news to patients. Vignettes were all combinations of five factors: level of bad news (infection with hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver, or liver cancer); request or not to the patient to come with spouse or partner; attempt or not by the physician to find out the patient's expectations about the test results; presence or absence of emotional supportiveness; and provision or not of complete and understandable information. In addition, nine physicians rated the same vignettes. Quality of information and emotional supportiveness explained more than 95% of the variance in patients' acceptability judgments, while the degree of badness of the news had no impact. In addition, for patients, low emotional supportiveness could not be fully compensated by high quality of information, nor the inverse. Physicians, in contrast, responded as if such compensations were possible. Physicians must appreciate that patients expect high levels of both empathy and information quality, no matter how bad the news.     

Health journalism in the service of power: ‘moral complacency’ and the Hebrew media in the Gaza–Israel conflict

The power of health news as a vehicle in the production of meaning in the service of power is the core of this article. Tracking the media coverage of a medical service, it shows how a routine practice can be invoked at a time of armed conflict so as to enhance a benevolent state image. The case at hand is the medical treatment of Gaza children in Israeli hospitals. A series of Internet searches revealed a group of publications on the subject in the Hebrew media, during and shortly after Israel's assault on Gaza in the winter of 2008–2009. In the press articles the treatments were invariably constituted as the epitome of Israel's compassion towards the enemy's children. This image relied, however, on a simultaneous silencing of other aspects of these treatments, which would have challenged this image. The monolithic depictions give rise to the notion of reversed moral panic or ‘moral complacency’, wherein the media amplifies a little‐known social phenomenon into an epitome of societal values and charges it with significance on a national scale. The article ends with considering some features that possibly render health news an especially convenient domain for state‐supportive media presentations.     

High‐Reliability Health Care: Getting There from Here

Context

Despite serious and widespread efforts to improve the quality of health care, many patients still suffer preventable harm every day. Hospitals find improvement difficult to sustain, and they suffer “project fatigue” because so many problems need attention. No hospitals or health systems have achieved consistent excellence throughout their institutions. High-reliability science is the study of organizations in industries like commercial aviation and nuclear power that operate under hazardous conditions while maintaining safety levels that are far better than those of health care. Adapting and applying the lessons of this science to health care offer the promise of enabling hospitals to reach levels of quality and safety that are comparable to those of the best high-reliability organizations.

Methods

We combined the Joint Commission''s knowledge of health care organizations with knowledge from the published literature and from experts in high-reliability industries and leading safety scholars outside health care. We developed a conceptual and practical framework for assessing hospitals’ readiness for and progress toward high reliability. By iterative testing with hospital leaders, we refined the framework and, for each of its fourteen components, defined stages of maturity through which we believe hospitals must pass to reach high reliability.

Findings

We discovered that the ways that high-reliability organizations generate and maintain high levels of safety cannot be directly applied to today''s hospitals. We defined a series of incremental changes that hospitals should undertake to progress toward high reliability. These changes involve the leadership''s commitment to achieving zero patient harm, a fully functional culture of safety throughout the organization, and the widespread deployment of highly effective process improvement tools.

Conclusions

Hospitals can make substantial progress toward high reliability by undertaking several specific organizational change initiatives. Further research and practical experience will be necessary to determine the validity and effectiveness of this framework for high-reliability health care.     

Behavioral Consequences of Conflict-Oriented Health News Coverage: The 2009 Mammography Guideline Controversy and Online Information Seeking

Building on channel complementarity theory and media-system dependency theory, this study explores the impact of conflict-oriented news coverage of health issues on information seeking online. Using Google search data as a measure of behavior, we demonstrate that controversial news coverage of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's November 2009 recommendations for changes in breast cancer screening guidelines strongly predicted the volume of same-day online searches for information about mammograms. We also found that this relationship did not exist 1 year prior to the coverage, during which mammography news coverage did not focus on the guideline controversy, suggesting that the controversy frame may have driven search behavior. We discuss the implications of these results for health communication scholars and practitioners.